Traditional versus Boring Uniforms

John Marzano Olympic Hero

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I'm not sure exactly where I'm going with this thread or how I'm going to get there, but I was thinking about baseball uniforms a bit today and I was wondering what separates a "boring" uniform from a "traditional" uniform.

Like, I think that this is the ultimate in boring uniforms:



This isn't much better:



Or this:



But I'd consider these traditional, or classy (I'm trying not to use the Sox or the Yanks because there's a lot of shit that goes with both of them):



Or:



Or:



Like I said, I tried to stay away from the Yankees and Red Sox; but I also tried to stay away from "traditional" uniforms that are worn by franchises that win a lot.

I guess what I'm trying to figure out here is why the Rays who have practically the same color scheme as the Royals and Dodgers appear to be perpetually playing under a grey cloud while the other two are in Technicolor?

Tp put it another way, what makes a baseball uniform memorable?
 

EvilEmpire

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I think the boring examples you posted need a little something extra that the more traditional examples you posted have: a number on the chest with that little extra splash of color. It may be a small thing, but I think it makes a difference.
 

DJnVa

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I think the Rays, maybe if/when they move into a new ballpark, should change their color scheme. I know that's not exactly what you asked, but their blue just doesn't seem to pop like KC's does.

I loved this one:

 

Rudi Fingers

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It's not just script instead of printing: The Rays, Padres, Mariners, Diamondbacks, and (to a lesser extent) Rangers have *stylized* printing that tries too hard to excite (and is also too hard to read) yet, opposite to intent, leads to boredom. Other teams (like the Pirates, Giants, and Astros) use printing that is traditional as opposed to boring.

Turn the jerseys around, and you'll find several examples of uniform numbering that is also too stylized and boring, including the Rangers, Brewers, and Diamondbacks.
 

John Marzano Olympic Hero

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It seems that you like the script instead of the printing.
In these examples, yes that is true. But I love the Pirates, Giants and Red Sox uniforms very much.

It's not just script instead of printing: The Rays, Padres, Mariners, Diamondbacks, and (to a lesser extent) Rangers have *stylized* printing that tries too hard to excite (and is also too hard to read) yet, opposite to intent, leads to boredom. Other teams (like the Pirates, Giants, and Astros) use printing that is traditional as opposed to boring.

Turn the jerseys around, and you'll find several examples of uniform numbering that is also too stylized and boring, including the Rangers, Brewers, and Diamondbacks.
I think that RudiFingers has it right. The Rays, Padres, Mariners, Brewers and Rangers try too hard. I'm not a big fan of the Astros home jerseys, I find them way too plain, I would have loved to see them wear something like this again:



These might be one of my favorite uniforms of all time. But I didn't include their uniforms because I like the plainness of their away set.

If you read UniWatch or go on the Chris Creamer boards, I think that people's uniform preferences skew to what they grew up with -- specifically what they saw when they first became fans. My first season that I was a real baseball fan was 1986 and it was full of fugly uniforms. Then in the winter of 87, six or seven teams changed their uniforms and that blew me away, because it was such a new experience. The Mariners can wear an S on their hat instead of an upside down trident? The White Sox and A's don't have to look like horseshit? The Braves can go back to what they were wearing in Milwaukee and Boston?

It was such a seismic shift in baseball aesthetics and it seemed to occur overnight.
 

NickEsasky

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I think part of it is that many of the teams you cited as classic came first and thus the ones that try to copy the classic, simple look seem derivative.
 

Papelbon's Poutine

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I was just going to comment that it seems like you just skew towards older and more ‘locked in’ styles/designs. Which I completely get and can agree with. The ones you cite haven’t changed much. Stuff like the Rangers or Astros seemingly change every 5-10 years or so. The Royals, A’s, Dodgers (or Sox/Yankees) get a small tweak but essentially are the same. Tho I hate the Friday Sox jerseys with a passion.

UniWatch is a favorite of mine. I’m a huge uniform dork too and I love the traditional/older ones. Stuff like the Maple Leafs (which may be my favorite uniform in sports). I like simple logos and color schemes; also creative but not ‘too cute’. The old Brewers. The Cubs. The Expos. Meanwhile alternate jerseys or crazy shit like the Jaguars two tone helmets are an eyesore.
 

Kliq

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I love the throwback Cardinal uniforms that have a pale yellow color to them.

I grew up during the mid-2000s where everything seemed to be trying to be EXTREME with the terrible Blue Jays outfits being memorably hideous. I kind of like in the last decade a lot of teams (Toronto, Houston, Cleveland, Cincinnati) have gone back to a more classic, simple look.
 

Rudi Fingers

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I was just going to comment that it seems like you just skew towards older and more ‘locked in’ styles/designs. Which I completely get and can agree with. The ones you cite haven’t changed much. Stuff like the Rangers or Astros seemingly change every 5-10 years or so. The Royals, A’s, Dodgers (or Sox/Yankees) get a small tweak but essentially are the same. Tho I hate the Friday Sox jerseys with a passion.

UniWatch is a favorite of mine. I’m a huge uniform dork too and I love the traditional/older ones. Stuff like the Maple Leafs (which may be my favorite uniform in sports). I like simple logos and color schemes; also creative but not ‘too cute’. The old Brewers. The Cubs. The Expos. Meanwhile alternate jerseys or crazy shit like the Jaguars two tone helmets are an eyesore.
The Toronto Blue Jays are great (and rare) example of a design that is modern, only partially 'locked in', compatible with tradition, yet not boring.
 

hbk72777

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I like most uniforms.

I prefer clean white jersey with a logo as opposed to a color. Sometimes it works, like the red of the Angels, or the Royals but the Padres brown, or the Oriole orange is just too distracting.

And for some reason, the Phillies maroon pinstripes helmet and shoes combo just looked awful to me.

I did like the early D backs purple and teal combo. There are enough red themed teams, it made them stand out. I mean, that one year when

I found this blog a few weeks ago. This guy does a really nice job of going through every minute change in almost every uniform. Some, that I never even noticed.

http://blog.heritagesportsart.com/
 

mauf

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Only the Yankees have played in more World Series than the Dodgers, and of course they have been around forever. I’d put their home unis in the same category as the Red Sox, Cubs, and Yankees — i.e., traditional, not boring.

The A’s should go back to their classic home unis with the big “A’s” on front.

Does MLB require teams to wear white home unis on days when there isn’t some sort of alternate jersey or special promotion? Because if I ran a team that wasn’t steeped in tradition, I’d prefer to wear color unis at home. If nothing else, it would be good for merchandise sales — how many people actually own a white home jersey for a team like the Padres or the Rays?
 

Kliq

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These are the Cardinal uniforms I was talking about; these are awesome:

 

charlieoscar

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1976 Chicago White Sox--Jack Brohamer said, "only if I can wear a halter top, too," and Goose Gossage (below) wanted time to shave his legs.
 

loshjott

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Maybe it's because I'm a Nats fan, but I think their new home whites with just the curly W and the number in front are a nice "traditional" rather than "boring" uniform - when not mucked up by alternate colors/designs for the W. And obviously they are on the new side.


Would be better without the number, but still not bad.
 

John Marzano Olympic Hero

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I was just going to comment that it seems like you just skew towards older and more ‘locked in’ styles/designs. Which I completely get and can agree with. The ones you cite haven’t changed much. Stuff like the Rangers or Astros seemingly change every 5-10 years or so. The Royals, A’s, Dodgers (or Sox/Yankees) get a small tweak but essentially are the same. Tho I hate the Friday Sox jerseys with a passion.

UniWatch is a favorite of mine. I’m a huge uniform dork too and I love the traditional/older ones. Stuff like the Maple Leafs (which may be my favorite uniform in sports). I like simple logos and color schemes; also creative but not ‘too cute’. The old Brewers. The Cubs. The Expos. Meanwhile alternate jerseys or crazy shit like the Jaguars two tone helmets are an eyesore.
UniWatch is a love-hate thing for me. On one hand, it's pretty cool to be able to go to one place and read about new uniforms and the kind of stuff that Paul Lukas writes about every day. If this was 1990, I'd be in pretty deep on that page.

But on the other hand, reading through the comments; the uniform universe is not really made up of people that I'd want to hang out with at all. Their obsessive attention to detail is pathological and their response to every new design is so over-the-top negative and hysterical, that it's almost not even worth asking for an opinion. As for Paul Lukas, I'm not sure how I really feel about him. There are times when he seems like a pretty decent guy, I like that he takes everyone's opinions seriously and seems to be pretty genuine in having a dialogue. Plus he really seems to love what he's doing.

He can be such a self-absorbed, smug twit. I don't care that you almost saw Prince that one time, that's not a story about the person who died. It's a story about you. And last week (I think) in one of his posts he wrote about how he and his girlfriend went to a bar where the clientele is mostly African American. He talked about how cool it was that they accepted him and treated him with respect, etc. It was so incredibly tone deaf and it came off as part "Hey, I'm so cool and hip, black people like me!" and part "Look at how tolerant I am drinking with people who aren't like me!" It was so bad that he was snapping pictures, like he was at the zoo. A couple of commenters, one who is African American, told him that this might not have been the best thing to write. Lukas shot back saying that this person was wrong and he's the hero here.

I get that if you write enough there's going to be some stuff that are going to rate very high on the cringe meter, but this was pretty bad and doubling down on it was even worse.

That being said, apparently his contract wasn't picked up by ESPN a few days ago which means he's out of a job come March. That sucks and I feel bad for him. Because even though his blog writing causes my eyes to immediately roll to the back of my skull; I thought that his EPSN stuff was pretty good.
 

Papelbon's Poutine

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UniWatch is a love-hate thing for me. On one hand, it's pretty cool to be able to go to one place and read about new uniforms and the kind of stuff that Paul Lukas writes about every day. If this was 1990, I'd be in pretty deep on that page.

But on the other hand, reading through the comments; the uniform universe is not really made up of people that I'd want to hang out with at all. Their obsessive attention to detail is pathological and their response to every new design is so over-the-top negative and hysterical, that it's almost not even worth asking for an opinion. As for Paul Lukas, I'm not sure how I really feel about him. There are times when he seems like a pretty decent guy, I like that he takes everyone's opinions seriously and seems to be pretty genuine in having a dialogue. Plus he really seems to love what he's doing.

He can be such a self-absorbed, smug twit. I don't care that you almost saw Prince that one time, that's not a story about the person who died. It's a story about you. And last week (I think) in one of his posts he wrote about how he and his girlfriend went to a bar where the clientele is mostly African American. He talked about how cool it was that they accepted him and treated him with respect, etc. It was so incredibly tone deaf and it came off as part "Hey, I'm so cool and hip, black people like me!" and part "Look at how tolerant I am drinking with people who aren't like me!" It was so bad that he was snapping pictures, like he was at the zoo. A couple of commenters, one who is African American, told him that this might not have been the best thing to write. Lukas shot back saying that this person was wrong and he's the hero here.

I get that if you write enough there's going to be some stuff that are going to rate very high on the cringe meter, but this was pretty bad and doubling down on it was even worse.

That being said, apparently his contract wasn't picked up by ESPN a few days ago which means he's out of a job come March. That sucks and I feel bad for him. Because even though his blog writing causes my eyes to immediately roll to the back of my skull; I thought that his EPSN stuff was pretty good.
I think those are fair comments on Lukas. And honestly I didn't even know he still wrote for ESPN, I just go directly to his blog; I thought they just optioned his stuff (which may be a distinction without a difference). He has a staff of a few other guys on there so you don't always have to deal with that angle of him to get your uniform fix and I assume he makes money off of it if that's the case. He can definitely be pretentious and I don't read much of his stuff that doesn't pertain to uniforms, but I'm a big uniform geek so hopefully he keeps something going.
 

John Marzano Olympic Hero

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The way I understand Lukas' relationship to ESPN is that he owns everything about UniWatch (he explained this on Monday) so no one is going to go on ESPN and write about uniforms under that headline. The blog was its own thing and the stuff he did for ESPN was separate. For lack of a batter term, his ESPN was much more polished.

As far as how much he makes off the blog, he said that his ESPN check made up 76% of his revenue; so this is probably a huge hit to him.
 

HriniakPosterChild

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Does MLB require teams to wear white home unis on days when there isn’t some sort of alternate jersey or special promotion? Because if I ran a team that wasn’t steeped in tradition, I’d prefer to wear color unis at home.
I don’t know about a rule.

Back in the old days (15-20 years ago), the choice of home uniform was left to a specialized fashion consultant officially known as the “starting pitcher.” And pitchers liked bright white home uniforms because they thought the batters had a harder time picking up the release point when there was more white in the general direction of the mound.

That’s what Dave Niehaus said on a Mariners broadcast.